What are some of the benefits of seeing a manual therapist?

Decreased pain in and around joints

Manual therapy can help to address pain via a process known as neuromodulation – as we use massage and hands on techniques, your nervous system changes how you feel. We calm things down and get you feeling better quickly, and from there help you to address how you can maintain that daily.
We can couple manual therapy with exercise based rehab to make the results stick, and make a real difference in your life.

Addressing low back pain

Low back pain is one of (if not the) most commonly experienced form of physical pain, according to statistics Canada it is the most commonly cited reason for sick day usage. The pain can be debilitating, and has a high incidence of returning. We want to identify the factors leading up to it, and reduce the pain now and the recurrence rate moving forward.

I prefer an approach in which we use manual therapy to reduce your pain as much as possible in a short time, and then movement therapy to increase your tolerance to daily activities. It’s useless to get you feeling better just lying around, let’s get you feeling better throughout your day.

Reduction or cessation of headaches

Headaches can often be caused by tight muscles in the neck impinging on sensitive structures. Treatment to reduce that impingement will decrease the frequency of those headaches.
There are a great number of hands on techniques that can help reduce, or even eliminate your headache pain completely – massage techniques, craniosacral techniques, muscle energy and mobility techniques and others are often incredibly effective at helping with your pain.

Increases in mobility after injuries

After injury we go through a cycle of muscle spasm to immobilize and then healing via scar tissue creation.
Scar tissue is rarely a bad thing (despite common beliefs to the contrary) as it’s performing a function to keep you moving and healthy.
A combination of manual therapy to decrease apprehension and pain in movement and active range of motion work to build tolerance can be very helpful in getting you back to your daily lifestyle, in a safe and effective manner.

Reduction/Elimination of symptoms from whiplash

Whiplash associated disorders are sensitive to movement because of the pain and the muscle splinting the neck, by reducing the pain in the area the splinting of the muscles will decrease and mobility will increase.

Increased athletic performance both on field and in training

The effect of athletic activity on the body is very taxing. Manual therapy can aid in reducing post training soreness, as well as reducing the effects of repetitive strain injuries such as shin splints, or shoulder mobility issues.

Treatment Options

Manual therapy based treatments are fantastic for immediate reduction of pain, and make a perfect step into more comprehensive rehabilitation of dysfunction, options include:

Deep Tissue Work	While intense feeling, deep tissue and direct approach can have fantastic immediate results in terms of increased range of motion, and decreased pain.
Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS)	A common side effect of post injury immobility is muscle wasting, or atrophy. EMS treatments use electrical current to assist in reducing atrophy by encouraging passive muscle contraction. Part of our post injury rehab means reducing our risk of reinjury – addressing atrophy is a key concern.
Muscle Energy	By using our muscles own force production, we can very effectively increase range of motion through stiff and sore joints. The key concept here is that this is an active technique that incorporates your own movement awareness – the effect is safe and immediate, and works well to address issues such as low back, or neck spasm, whiplash, and many other acute painful conditions.
Strain/Counterstrain	A gentle technique that’s very effective in acute injuries. Strain/Counterstrain is safe and effective in both acute and chronic injuries, as well as to address mobility coaching and training deficiencies.
Pre Performance Therapy	For pre-sport prep, our goal is to increase movement awareness, and active control – you want to move well, and comfortably. My approach incorporates massage based techniques as well as pre-sport warmup preparation and ballistic preparation.
Post Performance Therapy	For post-sport recovery, our goal is to decrease stiffness and pain. My approach incorporates massage based techniques and stretching, as well as active mobility education and evidence based recovery protocols.